The Politics of Humanity

transport of goods”.^69 Such images were central to the re-imagining and redefining
of people’s conceptualisation of slaves as human beings (though not necessarily as
equals), and generated a significant and persistent aesthetic trend denouncing the
evils of the slave trade. Indeed, half a century later, Turner famously chose the
subject of a slave ship, with slavers throwing the dead and dying overboard as a
vengeful typhoon approaches, for his Royal Academy Exhibition picture of 1840.^70
The theme had clearly acquired a powerful resonance in British public life. Turner
himself was prompted to paint the picture by the publication in 1839 of a number
of high-profile books on the horrors of slavery, including the second edition of
Thomas Clarkson’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the
Abolition of the Slave Trade , and a book on The African Slave Trade by Thomas F.
Buxton, serialised in The Times.^71
Today, though, we live in a much more crowded and complex media culture.
In the early 1990s, there was much talk of the “CNN effect” bringing the world’s
suffering even more vividly into our living rooms, in real time, and creating a global
public, who would spur their political leaders to action. But this proved somewhat
premature, with the “bodybag effect” showing that the “CNN effect”, to the extent
that it functioned at all, was a double edged sword. In the case of military
humanitarian interventions, calls to “do something” could rapidly become calls to
pull troops out.^72 Rapidly, talk turned to predictions of “compassion fatigue”.^73
A more nuanced debate on the role of visual imagery has since emerged, but
it reveals a dauntingly complex environment for any professional humanitarian
69
Laqueur, "Mourning, Pity, and the Work of Narrative in the Making of 'Humanity'", 40.
Italics in original. 70
Ruskin thought this picture represented Turner’s greatest single claim to immortality.
John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Volume I (New York & Chicago: National Library Association,
1873), 383. 71
Thomas Fowell Buxton, The African Slave Trade (London: John Murray, 1839). Thomas
Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the
African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (London: John W. Parker, 1839). James
Hamilton, 72 Turner: The Late Seascapes (London: Yale University Press, 2003), 47.
Lawrence Freedman, "Victims and Victors: Reflections on the Kosovo War", Review of
International Studies 26, no. 3 (2000): 337-341. See also Piers Robinson, "The Cnn Effect:
Can the News Media Drive Foreign Policy?" 73 Review of International Studies 25, no. 2 (1999).
Susan D. Moeller, Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and
Death (London: Routledge, 1999).